24 May 2008

I knew I should've left everything turned off when I went on vacation. Was on the road last night, so I missed this gem from HRC. Via the New York Post:

Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

Talk about things speaking for themselves. Is there anything that really needs to be added to clarify just how fundamentally disgusting that observation is? Not surprisingly, damage control started almost immediately:

"I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever," the former first lady said.

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson defended the comments to The Post, "She was talking about the length of the race and using the '68 election as an example of how long the races in the past have gone -- she used her husband's race in the same vein."

To address the second point, first: maybe it's just me, but invoking RFK's assassination doesn't call to mind ANY thoughts about the length of the race, only the tragic loss of a man's life. I don't see how anyone could take that reference "in the same vein" as the citation of Bill's campaign.

Because of that fact, Hillary's statement of regret is almost more offensive than her original comments. For all the criticisms against her, she is not dumb. If anything, she is too calculated in both action and word. There is simply no conceivable way that she could not realize how her Kennedy reference would come across. For her to claim any different is, not only a lie, but an insult to our intelligence.